Has Scotland Yard sent gallows for the Somali
ABOUT the last thing Judith Tebbutt remembered was her husband David turning off the lights and getting into bed. Then, she eventually told detectives, they held hands as they drifted off to sleep. Three hours later her nightmare began. brutal gang burst into the hut where the Tebbutts were stay- ing at the remote but luxurious Kiwayu Safari Village in Kenya on September 11, 2011. They shot David dead and took Judith hos- tage. After beating her with a rifle butt, they dragged her to the beach and took her by boat to Somalia, where she was held in primitive conditions for more than six months. A seasoned team from Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorism Command reached Kiwayu two days after her abduction. The evidence given by its leader, Detective Superintendent Neil Hibberd, would later prove crucial in the trial of the only man charged in connection with Judith’s kidnap – Ali Kololo, an illiterate Kenyan woodcutter and gatherer of wild forest honey.
Convicted and sentenced to death by hanging, he is now on death row in a tough jail in Mombasa.
After the 16-month trial ended last year, the British Government treated this as a triumph. ‘Welcome conviction… today of Mr Kololo for his role in Tebbutt kidnap and murder,’ tweeted Neil Wigan, the British Ambassador to Somalia.
But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that if Kenya hangs Kololo, it is likely to be executing an innocent man. We can disclose that: Astonishingly, Mrs Tebbutt said that until she was shown photos of Kololo after his arrest, she had never seen him before. She told police she didn’t recognise him being present either when her husband was shot or when she was in captivity.
Kololo was said to be wearing shoes that matched footprints at the crime scene when he was arrested. But the arresting officer told the court that Kololo was not wearing shoes at all – and he couldn’t fit into those that supposedly matched the prints as they were two sizes too small.
The trial was held in a language in which he was not fluent, and for almost all of it he had no defence lawyer. He had to cross-examine witnesses including Mrs Tebbutt and Mr Hibberd on his own.
The conviction is deemed so unsafe it faces a High Court challenge in London, led by Lord Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions.
CAUGHT IN THE DRAGNET
THE transcript of Kololo’s trial and key statements taken by Scotland Yard detectives have been obtained by this newspaper. The documents show the main reason for Kololo’s arrest was a decision by Kenyan police to quiz anyone seen in the vicinity of the Kiwayu Safari Village.
‘We told hotel workers to arrest anybody seen around the premises and report to police,’ Simon Mutiso, from Kenya’s Anti-Terrorism Police Unit, told the court.
Kololo finally does have a local lawyer, Alfred Olaba, who will be fighting his appeal in Kenya. He said yesterday: ‘There were no clues that led particularly to him. They just took him into custody and then tried to make the evidence fit.’
Of course, by the time the manhunt started, the kidnappers and Mrs Tebbutt were in nearby Somalia.
At his trial, Kololo insisted that he himself had been a victim of crime: deep in the forest, ivory poachers had stolen his shoes and his tools – a power saw and a machete called a panga.
Escaping their clutches, he came across a police vehicle near Kiwayu. He approached it to report the theft and promptly became a suspect – mainly, it seems, because he said he thought the poachers were Somalis.
Kololo and his family are desperately poor. They live in the village of Roka, a few miles from Kiwayu. Kololo’s wife divorced him after the trial so his two sons, aged five and seven, live in a one-room mud-hut with Kololo’s father, Babitu, who is in his 80s and blind.
Babitu said that without his son, the family has almost no income: ‘We depend on help from anyone who comes to visit us.’ Babitu’s elderly wife weaves mats, but could make less than £1 each from selling them.
Babitu is sure his son is innocent: ‘I cry thinking of him and the pain and hardship he is suffering. All we can do is pray. But we are happy that good people have come to be his lawyers.’
In his trial testimony, Kololo claimed he was tortured. As well as beating him, he said police ‘pulled my private parts’ which had made him incontinent. Police denied this, but when he was first due in court in Lamu, two hearings had to be adjourned because he needed hospital treatment.
Kololo said at his trial: ‘They wanted me to admit I had witnessed the killing of the white man and kidnapping of the white woman.’ He did not confess.
ENTER THE YARD’S FINEST
NEIL HIBBERD arrived in Kiwayu two days after Kololo’s arrest, accompanied by six detectives. They were later joined by a ballistics expert, a crime scene manager, a photographer, a blood spatter analyst, and a fingerprint specialist.
By now, their Kenyan colleagues were suggesting that Kololo’s role had been to guide the gang to the ‘banda’, the hut where the Tebbutts were staying. Surprisingly, perhaps, the Yard team did not interview Kololo,